DiscerningReader.com: Book Reviews

A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip

Mark Tubbs — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:51:45 +0000

Reviewed 03/12/2010 by Chad Vandervalk.

Not Recommended.

There has been a movement within the last few years to develop single-campus churches into multiple sites. To accomplish this, there may be a video feed from the main campus to other campuses, or a pre-recorded message broadcast, or even a teaching team sharing the teaching in the various campuses.

The main thing that makes this different from a church plant is that the various places all have the same organizational structure. They share a board, a vision, and leadership.

In their book A Multi-site Church Road Trip: Exploring the New Normal (ostensibly a follow-up to their earlier The Multi-Site Church Revolution), Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon, and Warren Bird take the reader to various churches around the United States that operate under this kind of a model.

It was interesting being exposed to all of the different ways that this basic model was being used throughout the country. The authors do a relatively good job at presenting the churches, their struggles and their growth strategies.

One of the main concerns I have with this book is that it presents this model as though it is the next big thing. According to the authors, this is the way of the future.

There are some real advantages to partnering in this fashion, but we have known this for years. Denominations worked, and still work, because they allow individual churches to do in partnership what they could not alone. Many of these multi-site churches reminded me of really small denominations, ones with some rather top heavy control.

While we may disagree with the role of the multi-site movement in the future, the real issue I have with the book is that it is not very enjoyable to read. There is no sustained connection over the book, rendering it quite uneven. The different authors write in different styles, which I found distracting. It was really just a collection of descriptions of a bunch of churches organized under one structure.

Interesting, perhaps, but not very useful in my opinion.

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The Noticer

Mark Tubbs — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:57:38 +0000

Reviewed 03/11/2010 by Leslie Wiggins.

Not Recommended.

He appears when least expected but most needed. Usually dressed in blue jeans, sandals, and an old t-shirt, the white-haired sage is a mystery to the small Orange Beach, AL community. The most anyone really knows about him is his name. "My name is Jones. No 'Mr.' Just plain Jones," is his customary reply.

Then again, that's his name if the character is white. He manifests himself in different ways to different individuals. To the hite characters, he's white and calls himself Jones. To the Hispanic landscapers, he's obviously Hispanic and calls himself Garcia. To the Chinese restaurant owner, he's Chinese and calls himself Chen.

Though his name and appearance change, his interactions with the characters are similar. Each person has a problem and Jones/Garcia/Chen comes along to offer him or her some much-needed perspective. "I am a noticer. It is my gift. While others may be able to sing well or run fast, I notice things that other people overlook. And you know, most of them are in plain sight. I notice things about situations and people that produce perspective. That's what most folks lack -- perspective -- a broader view. So, I give them that broader view...and it allows them to regroup, take a breath, and begin their lives again." After just one serendipitous encounter with Jones, the characters' lives are forever changed for the better.

The Noticer is an allegory offering wise perspectives on worry, love, marriage, dating, and success, to list a few.

While Jones' perspective is good and (could be) helpful (to some), I found the story contrived, the characters stereotypical, and Jones preachy. It reminded me of a book assignment for a business class I had to take in college. Businessmen, salesmen, CEOs, and idealists may love this book. There is a reader's guide included at the end that will help teams and groups study the book together and try to apply the principles set forth by Jones.

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When Helping Hurts

Mark Tubbs — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:09:50 +0000

Reviewed 03/10/2010 by Tim Challies.

Recommended.

In 2006 Americans spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.6 billion on short-term missions. Some 2.2 million Americans were involved in one of these trips, up from just 120,000 two decades before. Such mission work has very nearly become a rite of passage for young American Christians.

Many years ago I spoke to a missionary who was often asked if teams could come and visit his work in South America so they could help build a home or rebuild a church. He told me then that such trips often do more harm than good; that he actually dreads having yet another team show up, trying to help. I did not have time to ask him much more that day, but his words have long shaped my view of short-term missions. But now, having read Steve Corbett's and Brian Fikkert's When Helping Hurts, I understand more. Too often our well-intentioned efforts to help actually hinder the work of alleviating poverty.

The title and subtitle of this book are deliberately provocative: When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor...and Yourself. It is difficult for us to imagine how our efforts to help can actually harm both ourselves and the people to whom we extend a hand. And yet those who work with the poor can testify to a great deal of harm done to both.

The great strength of this book is a holistic understanding of poverty which teaches that being poor is much more than simply not having money. God created each of us to have four foundational relationships: relationship with God, with self, with others and with the rest of creation. When these various relationships are functioning properly, people are able to fulfill their God-given mandate to glorify Him through their labor. But when one or more of these is out-of-place, as they tend to be in the post-Fall world, a person is unable to fulfill that calling. Because humans are so multi-faceted, we need to have a multi-faceted view of poverty-alleviation. If we address only economic needs, handing money to those who have less than we do, we do nothing to alleviate the greater poverty of spirit.

Poverty is rooted in broken relationships, so the solution to poverty is rooted in the power of Jesus' death and resurrection to put all things into right relationship again.

Standing in the position of the wealthy, we often feel like we know all the answers; that if the poor were just a bit more like us, they would be much better off. But "one of the biggest problems in many poverty-alleviation efforts," say the authors, "is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of being of the economically rich--their god-complexes--and the poverty of being of the economically poor--their feelings of inferiority and shame." Or else we are too quick to act without understanding the nature of the poverty before us, without understanding whether people need relief, rehabilitation or development. According to the authors, "One of the biggest mistakes that North American churches make--by far--is in applying relief to situations in which rehabilitation or development is the appropriate intervention." There are times when giving money is the right thing to do and usually that is the easy thing to do. But far more often, we need to give time, attention and discipleship.

This book offers a much-needed dose of humility to missions, both long-term and short-term. America has the proud distinction of being the nation that gives more than any other for the alleviation of poverty. And yet Americans may have a sense of superiority, a kind of confidence, that causes them to do more harm than good, or as much harm as good, in many contexts. The authors warn their fellow Americans against the tendency to assume they've got all the answers and to assume that a quick fix is a good fix. The challenges facing those who are impoverished are nearly always far more than a few dollars, or a few thousand dollars, can easily fix. This book, with its holistic view of poverty and its eye on Jesus' power to renew and restore what is broken, offers true hope.

If you are going to go on a short-term missions project you need to read this book; if your church is getting involved in working with the poor in your community, you need to read this book; if your church is looking for involvement with missions work overseas, you need to read this book. Corbett and Fikkert tells what we've been doing wrong and offer solid, practical, biblical advice on what we can do to get it right at last.

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The Historical Jesus

Mark Tubbs — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:55:23 +0000

Reviewed 03/09/2010 by Trevin Wax.

Recommended.

"Who do people say that I am?" It's interesting that Jesus didn't start off by asking the disciples the personal question that would follow ("Who do you say that I am?"). He first asked them what other people were saying. The views of Jesus were varied in the first century. They are even more so today.

C.S. Lewis gave us an apologetic device called the "Trilemma", in which he argued that Jesus must be a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. He could not be simply a "nice teacher." A brilliant piece of apologetics in Lewis' day, it is less effective now. Why? Because the Trilemma only works if you accept the authority and authenticity of the original documents about Jesus' life. Today, by questioning the sources, picking and choosing which parts fit their overall portrait, scholars can wiggle out of Lewis' three options and offer a number of other views.

The Historical Jesus: Five Views brings together some of the major players in "Historical Jesus" research today. The only thing these contributors have in common is the source material that we find in the Gospels. And even on the source materials, they are divided as to what parts should be considered as historical evidence.

The book begins with an overview of "the quest for the historical Jesus". There are three major phases to this quest, culminating in recent research which emphasizes the Jewishness of Jesus. But even within the third quest, scholarly views of Jesus have fragmented to the point that no consensus is possible.

The first contribution is Robert M. Price's essay, "Jesus at the Vanishing Point". Price makes the case that there never was a Jesus of Nazareth. (If you wonder how anyone can actually make the case for Jesus' non-existence, you will get a good dose of conspiracy theory here.) Price's view is effectively shot down by each of the other contributors. James Dunn suggests that Price's essay should be retitled: "The Jesus Myth - a Thesis at Vanishing Point".

Next, John Dominic Crossan fashions Jesus as a prophet who taught non-violent resistance to Roman imperialism. Crossan is perhaps most known in evangelical circles for his statement that after Jesus' crucifixion, his body was probably thrown into a shallow grave and eaten by wild dogs. It's easy for evangelicals like myself to write off Crossan from the start. But I am challenged by his knowledge of Scripture, which I dare say exceeds that of a good many evangelicals, even some evangelical pastors. Unfortunately, his knowledge is like the scribes of old, always searching the Scriptures, but never coming to the true Jesus revealed therein.

Luke Timothy Johnson's essay argues that historical study is not the best way to understand Jesus. Johnson clears up misunderstandings about previous statements which seemed to imply that no historical study is necessary. Instead, Johnson wants to shine light on the limitations of historical research, which "all too frequently turns out to be not historical research at all, but a theological agenda wearing the external garb of history." (167)

James D. G. Dunn writes a brilliant essay on how the Quest for the Historical Jesus has lost its way. He launches a series of protests against the naturalistic presuppositions of those in the Jesus Seminar, and then he makes proposals. Dunn's essay starts out by taking a wrecking ball to certain pictures of the "historical Jesus" and then finishes by putting down a new foundation for his own approach.

The final essay comes from Darrell Bock. As an evangelical, Bock understands the limits of historical Jesus research. But he still sees value in this conversation because it "can give us a start and can open doors for discussion between people of distinct approaches to Jesus." (253) Bock makes the case that Jesus' intentions can best be seen in the symbolism of his actions within a Jewish context of expectation. His essay makes the case for the historicity of the Gospel accounts of Jesus.

I didn't think that this book could make a serious contribution to the discussion about the historical Jesus. The views are so different that there is very little common ground between the authors, except for the fact they agreed to contribute essays. But surprisingly, the book does succeed at giving an informative look at the current scholarly proposals. The responses of the authors are lively and engaging. If you are looking for a book that lays out some of the historical proposals, The Historical Jesus is a good place to start.

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Scandalous

Mark Tubbs — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:07:57 +0000

Reviewed 03/08/2010 by John Bird.

Recommended.

Do you want to see the greatest evidence of the love of God? Go to the cross. Do you want to see the greatest evidence of the justice of God? Go to the cross. It is where wrath and mercy meet. Holiness and peace kiss each other. The climax of redemptive history is the cross. So says D.A. Carson, research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, in his new book, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus.

Dr. Carson has been teaching since 1978, and it shows. He addresses deep and profound truths with clarity. What's the difference between propitiation and expiation? Carson cannot only explain it, but he can interest you while he does.He certainly held my interest. He even made me laugh. But more importantly, he informed me, convicted me, and challenged me. There was something highlighter-worthy on every page.

Scandalous has five parts. Each is distinct, keeping the book interesting, yet each ties into the main topic: the cross and resurrection. Part one looks at four "Ironies of the Cross" unfolded in Matthew's gospel. Dr. Carson says that these ironies "show attentive readers what is really going on." Part two is an unpacking of "The Center of the Whole Bible," Romans 3:21-26. It's here that Carson explains the meaning of the cross and why it was necessary. Part three deals with Satan's rage and how it is overcome. In part four, Carson looks at the meaning behind the raising of Lazarus, and in part five, he discusses Thomas, the "converted skeptic."

I'm usually not excited about eschatology, but I loved Dr. Carson's exposition of Revelation 12. The main point here is Satan's rage against the woman (the believing community), and how it is overcome. How are believers to function as salt and light in light of the enemy? "We dare not withdraw into a little holy huddle. But we must recognize with every ounce of our being that what finally transforms society is the gospel," which is advanced by the "word of our testimony." What will happen in the meantime? "The world will continue to get both better and worse. The gospel will advance, and so will opposition." But even in the face of opposition, even in the face of Satan's rage, believers can be confident. The victory "has been secured by the blood of the Lamb."

As this book is about the cross and the resurrection, which is the heart of the gospel, a theme that continues to run through the book is this advancing of the gospel mentioned above. What was the main point that Jesus made in raising Lazarus? "I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever believes in me will never die," (John 11:25-26). Jesus bears witness to himself. And John, in recording the event, bears witness to Jesus. He advances the gospel.

And what is the point of the story of Thomas the skeptic?

He saw and believed, and by his witness, by his confession he still speaks and, by God's grace, generates faith in countless later generations who come to share his faith because of his witness to the truth. Like Thomas, because of Thomas, they believe, they have eternal life, and they are blessed...Here is the function of a converted skeptic. And thus, it's the function of every believer.

But evangelism is not the focus of the book. The focus, instead, is Jesus Christ and what He accomplished. And it is this focus which makes me so highly recommend this book.

In all of our theologizing, in all of our debates about how the New Testament uses the Old Testament and the precise meaning of inerrancy and all the other subjects that must be addressed, do not ever lose the heart of the issue: 'God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ' (2 Cor. 5:19).

Thank you, Dr. Carson, for faithfully advancing the gospel.

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A New Kind of Christianity

Mark Tubbs — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:41:14 +0000

Reviewed 03/05/2010 by Tim Challies.

Not Recommended.

Early in George Orwell's iconic 1984 is a particularly haunting scene. Winston, the hero of the story, is confessing to his diary a sexual encounter with a prostitute.

Though Big Brother rigidly controls even sexual union and though sex is viewed as "a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema," still Big Brother cannot remove from humanity the desire and the need for intimacy. One evening Winston spots a prostitute near a train station. "She had a young face," he writes, "painted very thick. It was really the paint that appealed to me, the whiteness of it, like a mask, and the bright red lips. Party women never paint their faces." In a society where abject fear and loneliness are the norm, Winston craves the intimacy of sex. But as he goes into this woman's apartment and lies with her, he turns up a lamp, casting a bright light on her face. And immediately he sees that the appearance of beauty was a lie. "What he had suddenly seen in the lamplight was that the woman was old. The paint was plastered so thick on her face that it looked as though it might crack like a cardboard mask. There were streaks of white in her hair; but the truly dreadful detail was that her mouth had fallen a little open, revealing nothing except a cavernous blackness. She had no teeth at all."

But, despite his horror, his revulsion, Winston continues. In his diary he writes "When I saw her in the light she was quite an old woman, fifty years old at least. But I went ahead and did it just the same." Though the woman loses all sexual appeal, Winston continues in this act. He continues because, though his desire is quenched, still sex is an act of rebellion. By sleeping with this prostitute he is engaging in an act of heart-felt rebellion against Big Brother.

It wasn't too long ago that I wrote about Brian McLaren and got in trouble. Reflecting on seeing him speak at a nearby church, I suggested that he appears to love Jesus but hate God. Based on immediate and furious reaction, I quickly retracted that statement. I should not have done so. I believed it then and I believe it now. And if it was true then, how much more true is it upon the release of his latest tome A New Kind of Christianity. In this book we finally see where McLaren's journey has taken him; it has taken him into outright, rank, unapologetic apostasy. He hates God. Period.

"It's time for a new quest," write McLaren, "launched by new questions, a quest across denominations around the world, a quest for new ways to believe and new ways to live and serve faithfully in the way of Jesus, a quest for a new kind of Christian faith." McLaren frames the book around "Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith." They cut to the very heart of the faith, foundational in every way. He asks:

The narrative question: What is the overarching story line of the Bible?
The authority question: How should the Bible be understood?
The God question: Is God violent?
The Jesus question: Who is Jesus and why is he important?
The gospel question: What is the gospel?
The church question: What do we do about the church?
The sex question: Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?
The future question: Can we find a better way of viewing the future?
The pluralism question: How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?
The what-do-we-do-now question: How can we translate our quest into action?

His purpose, he insists, is not to answer the questions, but to provide responses to them. Answers indicate finality, responses indicate conversation and openness. "The responses I offer are not intended as a smash in tennis, delivered forcefully with a lot of topspin, in an effort to win the game and create a loser. Rather, they are offered as a gentle serve or lob; their primary goal is to start the interplay, to get things rolling, to invite your reply. Remember, our goal is not debate and division yielding hate or a new state, but rather questioning that leads to conversation and friendship on the new quest." But that is mere semantics. Whether answering or responding (whether saying tomato or tomahto), what McLaren does through these ten questions is to completely rewrite the Christian faith. His "gentle lobs" rip the very heart out of the faith.

At the center of his remix of the faith is the claim that most Christians look at their faith through a flawed Platonic, Greco-Roman lens instead of through a biblical, Jewish lens. "God's unfolding drama is not a narrative shaped by the six lines in the Greco-Roman scheme of perfection, fall, condemnation, salvation, and heavenly perfection or eternal perdition. It has a different story line entirely. It's a story about the downside of 'progress'--a story of human foolishness and God's faithfulness, the human turn toward rebellion and God's turn toward reconciliation, the human intention toward evil and God's intention to overcome evil with good." This Greco-Roman God, the one that most Christians believe in, is a "damnable idol...defended by many a well-meaning but misguided scholar and fire-breathing preacher."

McLaren plays the all-too-typical "everyone else has it wrong" card. It turns out that most of us (all but a handful of enlightened intellectuals, as it happens) have been reading the Bible through the distorted lens of a Greco-Roman narrative. This narrative produced many false dualisms, an air of superiority and a false distinction between those who were "in" and those who were "out." These three marks of false narrative have so impacted our faith that we can hardly see past them. But Brian is willing and eager to play Moses, leading us out of the Egypt of our own ignorance and into the Promised Land of the new Christianity.

It would take more time than I'd be willing to give it to offer a point-by-point explanation of what responses McLaren proposes for each of the ten questions or to document the ramifications of his new theology. He denies the Fall, he denies original sin, he denies human depravity, he denies hell. And that is just in the first few pages. Needless to say, all of this leads him to a radically unbiblical view of the cross and the purpose and work of Jesus. Though he insists that he considers the Bible "inspired" (though certainly not in a traditional sense) he also says that most Christians have read it wrong, having viewed it as a kind of constitution in which God gives Spirit-breathed, inerrant revelation of himself. "I'm recommending we read the Bible as an inspired library. This inspired library preserves, presents, and inspires an ongoing vigorous conversation with and about God, a living and vital civil argument into which we are all invited and through which God is revealed." After all, "revelation doesn't simply happen in statements. It happens in conversations and arguments that take place within and among communities of people who share the same essential questions across generations. Revelation accumulates in the relationships, interactions, and interplay between statements."

What does the Bible accomplish then? What does it teach us about God? "Scripture faithfully reveals the evolution of our ancestors' best attempts to communicate their successive best understandings of God. As human capacity grows to conceive of a higher and wiser view of God, each new vision is faithfully preserved in Scripture like fossils in layers of sediment." The Bible is an ongoing conversation about God's character in which humans come to progressively more accurate understandings of who he is. There is no reason to think that any of them actually had it right. His reinterpretations of Job and Romans are a sight to behold, so muddled and so fabricated that they become absolutely nonsensical. There is a deliberate ignorance at work here.

The arrogance of it all is stunning. McLaren is angrier than he has been before and more scornful. Still, though, he presents his ideas coated with the veneer of a false humility. But, handily, he builds into the book the means he will use to answer his critics. He will simply accuse his detractors of having this old Greco-Roman understanding of the faith. We poor fundamentalists cannot be among the new kind of Christian until we have been enlightened to understand the Bible through an entirely new narrative structure. Only then will this all become clear. Until then, more to be pitied are we than any men.

Here, in A New Kind of Christianity it's as if McLaren is screaming "I hate God!" at the top of his lungs. And swarms of Christians are looking at him with admiration and saying, "See how that guy loves God?" I don't know what McLaren could do to make the situation more clear. In fact, his book is nearly indistinguishable from many of the de-conversion narratives that are all the rage today. Compare it with Bart Ehrman's God's Problem and you'll see many of the same arguments and the same misgivings; you'll find, though, that Ehrman is at least more honest. He at least has the integrity to walk away from faith altogether rather than reinventing God in his own image.

McLaren says he would prefer atheism over belief in the God so many of us see in Scripture. Well, he is not far off. This new kind of Extreme Makeover: God Edition Christianity is no Christianity at all. It is not a faith made in the image of Jesus Christ, but a faith made in the image of a man who despises God and who is hell-bent on dragging others along with him as he becomes his own god.

As Winston turned up the light, he saw that prostitute for what she really was. Here McLaren turns up the light and we see what his faith, what his Christianity, really is. We see it in all its toothless, caked-on horror. This new kind of Christianity is simply paganism behind a thick coating of false humility and biblical language. It is an expression of rebellion against God far more than it is a pursuit of new intimacy with the Creator.

And like Orwell's whore, many will go to this book seeking intimacy with God only to content themselves with rebellion against him. For each is satisfying in its own way.

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John Bunyan

Mark Tubbs — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:44:35 +0000

Reviewed 03/03/2010 by John Bird.

Not Recommended.

Who was the man who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, and what shaped him? Those are the questions that Kevin Belmonte seeks to answer in his new biography of John Bunyan. This book is one of many in Thomas Nelson's "Christian Encounters" series.

John Bunyan is known as having been an uneducated tinker, or mender of pots, pans, and kettles. But his lack of education was due to lack of opportunity, not lack of interest. He mastered every book that he could get his hands on, and he "lived in the Bible till its words [had] become his own."

After his conversion, Bunyan preached in and around Bedford, England. His preaching was powerful. When the Puritan theologian John Owen was asked how he, an educated divine, could listen to the preaching of an illiterate tinker, Owen replied: "Could I possess that tinkers abilities for preaching, I would most gladly relinquish all my learning."

For all its power, Bunyan's preaching was also illegal, as he was not commissioned by the Church of England. This crime landed him in prison for twelve years, where he wrote his masterpiece, "a matchless alloy of imagery, plot, and language 'written cleane and pure'": The Pilgrims Progress.

Any book written about Bunyan is bound to be at least interesting due to its subject. Belmonte's book is well researched and he has apparently read (and quotes from) every Bunyan biography in existence. He has also thoroughly researched the time and place in which Bunyan lived, from the type of games he played when we was a boy to the likely layout of the jail that housed him later in life. And I appreciate Belmonte's enthusiasm for The Pilgrim's Progress, for which he provides a seven-page summary.

But overall I was disappointed. Belmonte's Bunyan is wordy and repetitive. Just when I thought we were moving forward, the author would repeat something from three pages previous. And to slow us down even more, Belmonte goes on numerous narrative excursions, offering a mini biography of everyone who has ever written about, or even mentioned, John Bunyan.

However, my biggest disappointment is the perspective from which the author writes. Belmonte has an undergraduate degree in English Literature and graduate degrees in Church History and American and New England studies. The interest in literature and secular history shine through: What influenced him to write as he did? To which great works of literature can his works be compared? And who in the world of literature or politics was influenced by him? These are the questions that interest Belmont.

But the focus on Bunyan the author comes at the expense of Bunyan the Christian. The spiritual depth of The Pilgrim's Progress and its author is a side note at best. The author downplays the spiritual side of Bunyan throughout the work.

In his autobiography, Grace Abounding, Bunyan describes his conversion as being marked by fears and dreams of hell. Belmonte claims these were probably due to Bunyan's overactive imagination, and perhaps from a sermon he heard from an overzealous preacher. Bunyans being "cast down and troubled" was most likely a bad case of clinical depression.

Because it is short and easy to read, Belmonte's John Bunyan may make a good introduction to the life of our worthy Puritan. It may also prove helpful to the undergraduate working on a research paper for their English literature class. But as an inspiring Christian biography, it just doesn't work.

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Wired for Intimacy

Mark Tubbs — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:49:35 +0000

Reviewed 03/01/2010 by Tim Challies.

Recommended.

I read recently of a researcher who wanted to study the effects of pornography on young adult males. He carefully built the structure for the study, determining how he would compare young men who had experienced pornography with a control group comprised of those who had never come into contact it. Tragically this researcher had to cancel his study. He found that he was unable to put together a control group; he could not find young men who had not discovered pornography. The experiment was impossible to conduct.

That is the kind of society we live in today, a society that is absolutely overwhelmed with pornography. The lure of porn is almost irresistible, particularly to young men. If the devil wanted to find a way of destroying young men, of impacting the ability for men to relate properly to women, of disrupting families and hardening hearts, he could hardly do better than this.

Much has been written in recent years about pornography. But new to store shelves is a book that is different from all the others, at least all of the other books targeted at a Christian audience. William Struthers' Wired for Intimacy looks not primarily to the heart but to the brain. He shows how the male brain is hard-wired for intimacy and relationships and how pornography affects the male brain. He says

Men seem to be wired in such a way that pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their brains and has a long-lasting effect on their thoughts and lives...When we better understand the devastating spiritual, psychological, social and biological reality of how pornography violates our unique position in God's creation, we will be better able to minister to hose who have been wounded by it.

What he provides is a well-rounded understanding of how pornography affects men. He looks beyond the usual--beyond the moral and ethical and legal and even spiritual. He shows that pornography is also a physical matter, "rooted in the biological intricacies of our sexual design." Though there is value in books that look from the other angles,

calls to pray harder, move the computer to the living room and get plugged into an accountability group only go so far. They come across as hollow to many men whose brains have been altered and rewired by their experiences with pornography. They have trained their brains to respond sexually to the pornography they consume.

Though there is value in reading this entire book, the heart of the book is the brain. In one chapter right in the middle of the book Struthers provides a primer on the brain and shows both how sexuality is hard-wired into the brain and how pornography can disrupt that God-given capacity. He shows that in many ways the male brain is built as an ideal receiver for pornography; the capacity of the brain to pursue intimacy with a wife is very easily disrupted and perverted by a desire to look at pornography. The wiring that ought to be used to pursue intimacy with one woman can easily be disrupted and used to pursue a kind of false intimacy with an endless succession of women. Men who have become consumed with pornography will have to admit with the author that

they have unknowingly created a neurological circuit that imprisons their ability to see women rightly as created in God's image. Repeated exposure to pornography creates a one-way neurological superhighway where a man's mental life is over-sexualized and narrowed. It is hemmed in on either side by high containment walls making escape nearly impossible.

What Struthers both claims and (at least to my mind) proves is that looking at pornography and acting out to it creates neural pathways that disrupt the "normal" pathways. As pornography use and acting out to it become habitual, the pathways become more and more pronounced and, therefore, more difficult to overcome. Soon a man has rewired his brain in such a way that true intimacy becomes a challenge. Pornography addiction and sexual compulsion is built in the brain and involves "the visual system (looking at porn), the motor system (masturbating), the sensory system (genital stimulation) and neurological effect of orgasm (sexual euphoria from opiates, addictive dopamine in the nucleus accumbens and reduced fear in the amygdale). They have now begun to store this pattern as a reinforced neurological habit." Seeing how he gets here and seeing how the various parts of the brain work together to make a man desire sexual fulfillment is well worth the price of the book.

The author's work in showing how the brain can be rewired (and miswired) through pornography is undoubtedly the most important contribution of the book. But I found great benefit in looking at his description of the sexual nature of the brain outside the context of pornography. Here we see how God has fearfully and wonderfully constructed human sexuality and has deeply integrated it into the inner workings of the brain. This section proves that a man's desire to make love to his wife is not purely psychological or even mental, but something that is deeply neurological. I hardly even know how to describe it except to urge you to read this book and discover it for yourself. You will stand amazed at what God has done.

Before I close let me say that some Christians may be tempted to assume that Struthers will defend men who look at pornography claiming that "their brains made them do it." But this is not at all the case. While the male brain does predispose men to be drawn to nudity and drawn to images of sexuality, this does not provide an excuse for indulging. To the contrary, it challenges men to be exceedingly careful about what they view and it makes them doubly responsible before God for images they've consumed. The implications of the neurological basis for human sexuality call men to purity before God in a whole new way.

Wired for Intimacy is a book we need. With pornography increasingly reaching epidemic proportions, this book helps us understand it at a whole new level. And it calls us to deal with human sexuality in a way that acknowledges all of its dimensions--moral, ethical, psychological, spiritual and physical. I give Wired for Intimacy my highest recommendation.

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Knowing Christ Today

Mark Tubbs — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 04:47:22 +0000

Reviewed 02/25/2010 by Trevin Wax.

Not Recommended.

Dallas Willard has carved out a place of authority in evangelicalism as a leader in spiritual formation. The title of his new book, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, sounds as if he is making a case for subjective experience as the most reliable way of understanding God and the Scriptures. Actually, this book begins with a robust defense of the objectivity of Christianity's truth claims.

Knowing Christ Today starts out strong:

This book is about knowledge and about claims to knowledge in relationship to life and Christian faith. It is concerned, more precisely, with the trivialization of faith apart from knowledge and with the disastrous effect of a repositioning of faith in Jesus Christ, and of life as his students, outside the category of knowledge. (1)

Willard claims that "a life of steadfast discipleship to Jesus Christ can be supported only upon assured knowledge of how things are, of the realities in terms of which that life is lived." (7) Far from seeing knowledge in opposition to faith, Willard believes that "knowledge is a friend to faith, essential to faith and to our relationship with God in the spiritual life." (10)

For Willard, belief is not powerful enough to govern our life unless it is connected to knowledge - specifically, the truth and evidence that knowledge is built upon. Our belief is strengthened when we understand that our knowledge of Christianity is just as vital and valuable as our knowledge in other spheres in life. The Christian faith is based, not merely in preferences or emotions, but in actual knowledge.

Willard makes some great points in the first third of this book. He emphasizes the need for those who profess faith in Christ to back up their commitment with knowledge. He sees knowledge as important for our Christian witness in the world. He calls Christians to stand firm on what we know to be true, even if society relegates our truth claims to the realm of belief.

Willard describes recent shifts in Western thinking about morality. He writes:

This is what has now changed - not just which things are good or bad, right or wrong, but the very status of good and right themselves and of the difference it makes whether you are good or right or their opposites. (68)

Willard's analysis goes to the root issues that have led to our degenerating society:

To say that moral knowledge has disappeared is just to say that what those people knew, and know now, is no longer made available to the public as knowledge by the institutions of knowledge in our social and political system, though it was so made available at times in the past. (72)

Willard is right. The decline of moral values did not take place because some people in society simply woke up one morning and decided that certain taboos of the past were now acceptable. The true shift took place when morality was removed from the public sphere and treated as subjective.

Though Willard emphasizes knowledge in this book, he understands that knowledge is not enough. The human heart is irrational, leading us to choose not to believe what we know. We know we're probably not going to win the lottery and yet we continue to play the lottery. Human life is full of self-delusion.

Willard also makes good points regarding the separation of church and state. He writes:

The real significance of church and state is that religion is not teaching something that would be known in the knowledge of morality...If it were seriously imagined that the teachings of Christianity or other religious constituted a vital and irreplaceable knowledge of reality, there would be no more talk of the separation of church and state than there is of the separation of chemistry or economics and state. (32)

Though Knowing Christ Today starts out well, the middle section focuses on rational reasons for the existence of God. These chapters are substantive, but there is nothing particularly new in Willard's approach. It would have been better for him to footnote other apologetic resources and continue on with his initial thesis. Instead, the middle of the book feels like an academic excursus that goes on too long.

Later, the book takes a turn for the worse. Whenever Willard writes about Jesus, it is in the context of following Jesus as just a moral example. While Christ's teaching is indeed a window into the love of God, I believe we learn much more about God's love by examining his sacrificial death. But Willard never takes us to the cross - the very heart of our faith. His picture of Jesus in this book is so tilted to Jesus-as-example, that we miss out on the richer, more glorious picture in Scripture.

At the end of the book, Willard opens the door to inclusivism. He writes:

Many people who are Christians by certain identifiable human standards - say, by baptism church membership, having 'prayed to receive Christ,' or regular partaking of the sacraments - still lack the inward 'circumcision' of which Paul here speaks. On the other hand, any who lack those recognizable marks, but have the inward heart God looks for is acceptable to God - no matter in what other ways they may or may not be identifiable. (180)

It is interesting to watch as Willard himself pulls back from embracing the implications of his statements. He knows that inclusivism could affect our missionary passion. So he writes:

...the Christian pluralism of which we here speak is not the Christian gospel. In fact, Christian pluralism is not really very 'good news' at all. It is more like a 'loophole' than a gospel. There is little or nothing in it that gives hope to the individual. (188)

I appreciate Willard's admission that inclusivism leads to bad missiological implications. But he has already flung wide the door for those implications by leaving the "loophole" in the first place.

Overall, Knowing Christ Today is a very uneven book. It starts out well and then takes a turn that, in the end, left me as baffled. Willard's proposal is designed to help Christians consider the source and authority of morality, religion, and spiritual knowledge in our society today, but many of his affirmations lead to confusion rather than clarity.

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The Heart of Addiction

Mark Tubbs — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:03:11 +0000

Reviewed 02/24/2010 by Bob Kellemen.

Recommended.

Dr. Mark Shaw brings an impressive resume uniquely suited for a biblical approach to addictions. He holds biblical counseling certification with the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors (NANC), is a certified Master's Level Addiction Professional (MLAP), as well as being a Senior Pastor.

A Theology of Habitual Sin

Shaw eschews the terminology of "addiction" and seeks to get at the "heart of addiction" by conceptualizing it as a "life-dominating and life-devastating sin problem." He sees addiction ultimately as a "worship disorder." Further, Shaw takes issue with the common medical model approach that links addictions to the "disease model."

That being said, Shaw is not simplistic in his approach. He recognizes that the body can respond to a sin problem so that over time actions associated with addiction become habitual and extremely difficult to overcome. This is a very useful balance missed by some.

In fact, he's more than balanced. Shaw is comprehensive. He acknowledges that even after people have initially overcome the physical portion of addiction:

Physically, they may still experience real cravings.
Mentally, they may always battle to take their thoughts captive to Christ.
Emotionally, they may struggle with feelings that will tempt them to want to return to the addiction for an escape.
Spiritually, they may experience days when they wonder if God has forgotten them.

Rejecting the worlds definitions of addiction, Shaw then develops a concise biblical description. "Physical addiction occurs when you repeatedly satisfy a natural appetite and desire with a temporary pleasure until you become the servant of the temporary object of pleasure rather than its master" (p. 27). Addictions are not "compulsions" for Shaw, but rather "persistent habitual choices."

Shaw wisely addresses habitual sin from the threefold biblical plotline of Creation, Fall, Redemption. Thus he embeds his theology of habitual sin in the context of Gods original design for the soul, sin's depravity, and Christ's final solution for and victory over all sin--including "addictive sins."

Perhaps the most insightful and needful chapter is where Shaw addresses the physical components of addiction (Chapter 9). Unfortunately, many biblical counselors seem to skip or minimize this important area. Shaw not only tackles it, he nails it. He carefully traces what I might call a "theology of desire" (he calls it a theology of appetite). He assists readers to see the purpose for God-given desires, appetites, and affections, while also mapping where they can go sinfully wrong and how they can become habitually sinful.

There is much to appreciate in Shaw's theological development. There were two areas, though, where Shaw could have engaged the theological issues a bit deeper. First, Shaw assumes that the "old nature" or "old man" still resides in the believer, which is a common enough belief. However, it would have been good in a book of this depth to address or acknowledge, at least briefly, the competing view. Namely, while the believer is not perfect this side of heaven, and while the believer does battle the world, the flesh, and the devil, the old nature or old man has truly been crucified with Christ. There are implicational differences that derive out of these two theological positions.

Second, while Shaw does develop a nuanced perspective on addiction, it might have been helpful for him to grapple with concepts such as "enslavement" and "mastery" (2 Peter 2:19). And the powerful imagery where Peter speaks of one who knows the Lord as Savior (2 Peter 2:20) as "a dog returns to its vomit" (2 Peter 2:22). Peter (and at times Paul) seems to use terms like these to indicate a depth of entanglement of sin akin to, but different from, addiction. I expected to read Shaw engaging passages like these, but did not. To his credit, he did address other complex issues such as lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life, and a seared conscience.

A Methodology of Victory Over Habitual Sin

Of course, great theology is truly great because it leads to relevant principles and practices for spiritual growth. Shaw so seamlessly blends theology and methodology that you can't find where one ends and the other begins (which is very good). For instance, in Chapter 10, he discusses idolatry using the practical and pictorial imagery of the "go button" and the "stop button." "Go button pushers" excessively satisfy their natural appetites, so they must guard their hearts when doing anything pleasurable. This is not radical abstention, but wise moderation always with the ultimate goal of glorifying God rather than loving pleasure.

A large part of Shaws methodology rightly focuses on renewed thinking leading to renewed emotions. Fortunately, in his skillful hands this is not some Christianized version of rational-emotive therapy. Rather, Shaw focuses his readers on renewing their thinking in the context of biblical reality as portrayed in Scripture.

He makes this very practical by addressing the common "motivating factor" for many addictive behaviors: escaping emotional pain. We don't deny our emotional pain. Rather, for Shaw we take that emotional pain to Christ and to His Word. We find joy even when we can't find relief.

This become even more practical in Chapter 12 where Shaw dissects specific emotions and prescribes biblical principles for addressing them in spiritually healthy ways. He describes how we can respond to bitterness, guilt, discontentment, loneliness, depression, and despair in ways that lead us toward God rather than toward god-substitutes.

The actual "methodology" portion of the book begins with Chapter 13 (but obviously starts sooner in Shaw's skillful application of theology). Shaw uses the biblical motif of put off and put on. With some writers, this becomes rather "behavioralistic." Not with Shaw. He talks about putting off the depths of sin, including sin's denial and self-deception.

He then talks about putting on, again in a heart-centric way. Here (Chapter 17) Shaw again highlights renewing the mind. He avoids generic language, instead focusing on idiosyncratic renewal, the battle for the mind, how to fight cravings, and how to resist the devil's temptation. He then moves toward putting on right actions-based upon renewed beliefs.

Thus Shaw includes specific chapters on putting off and putting on beliefs, actions, and emotions. He writes specifically about putting off sinful idols of the heart. However, this excellent work could have benefited from specific sections about putting on a renewed, grace-oriented, love relationship with God in Christ. It certainly was implied. And it certainly is contained in the various "heart prayers" at the end of each chapter. However, specific chapters on returning to God, "the Spring of Living Water" would seem central in a book on putting off sinful addictions and putting on ongoing spiritual affections. Since addiction is a "worship disorder," I would have liked to have seen more on moving from the idolatry of addiction to the worship of God through putting on renewed relational/spiritual affections, passions, and desires. It's there...it just could have been highlighted more.

Shaw concludes with Appendixes A to K which each provide very practical tools. Taken together, these seventeen chapters and eleven appendixes provide a wealth of authoritative, relevant wisdom. The Heart of Addiction: A Biblical Perspectivewill prove extremely helpful for pastors, counselors, and spiritual friends, and for the individual seeking ongoing victory over habituated sin.

Editor's note: an accompanying workbook is also available from Amazon.com or from Focus Publishing itself.

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